Manage On-Screen Participants - Android

It is important that only the necessary person are present on the screen when livestream is on. To handle this, we will be using the pin and unpin methods of the Participant class.

note

To ensure only the hosts/speakers are shown in the grid, you should use the SPOTLIGHT layout and pin as the priority when starting the interactive livestream.

Let us first explore two methods that we will be using to manage on-screen participants.

pin()

With these method you can pin any participant's Camera, Screen Share or both. This can be useful to identify the participants based on which you can perform rendering participant grid.

unpin()

With these methods you can unpin any participant's Camera, Screen Share or both. This can be useful to reset pin state of the participant.

info

Important Changes Android SDK in Version v0.2.0

• The following modes have been deprecated:
• CONFERENCE has been replaced by SEND_AND_RECV
• VIEWER has been replaced by SIGNALLING_ONLY

Please update your implementation to use the new modes.

⚠️ Compatibility Notice:
To ensure a seamless meeting experience, all participants must use the same SDK version.
Do not mix version v0.2.0 + with older versions, as it may cause significant conflicts.

Managing On-Screen Participants

1. If you want to pin all the hosts/speakers automatically, you can do it by listenting to the onMeetingJoined callback and onParticipantModeChanged, where you can pin and unpin based on the mode.

Kotlin

private val meetingEventListener: MeetingEventListener = object : MeetingEventListener() {
  override fun onMeetingJoined() {
        val localParticipant = meeting!!.localParticipant
        //We will pin the participant if mode is SEND_AND_RECV
        if (localParticipant.mode == "SEND_AND_RECV") {
            localParticipant.pin()
        } else {
            localParticipant.unpin()
        }
   }

  override fun onParticipantModeChanged(data: JSONObject) {
    val localParticipant = meeting!!.localParticipant
    //We will pin the participant if mode is SEND_AND_RECV else unpin him
    if(localParticipant.id.equals(data.getString("peerId"))
    {
        if(localParticipant.mode == "SEND_AND_RECV")
        {
            localParticipant.pin()
        }else{
            localParticipant.unpin()
        }
    }
  }
}

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
  //...

  // add listener to meeting
  meeting!!.addEventListener(meetingEventListener)
}

Java

private final MeetingEventListener meetingEventListener = new MeetingEventListener() {
  @Override
  public void onMeetingJoined() {
    Participant localParticipant = meeting.getLocalParticipant();
    //We will pin the participant if mode is SEND_AND_RECV
    if (localParticipant.getMode() == "SEND_AND_RECV") {
        localParticipant.pin();
    } else {
        localParticipant.unpin();
    }
  }

  @Override
  public void onParticipantModeChanged(JSONObject data) {
    Participant localParticipant = meeting.getLocalParticipant();
    //We will pin the participant if mode is SEND_AND_RECV else unpin him
    if(localParticipant.getId().equals(data.getString("peerId"))
    {
        if(localParticipant.getMode() == "SEND_AND_RECV")
        {
            localParticipant.pin();
        }else{
            localParticipant.unpin();
        }
    }
  }
};

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  //...

  // add listener to meeting
  meeting.addEventListener(meetingEventListener);
}

2. When rendering the participant grid on the Speaker side, make sure to show only the participants who are in SEND_AND_RECV mode. You can filter the participants as shown in below example.

Kotlin

 private fun getSpeakerList(): List<Participant?>? {
    val speakerList: MutableList<Participant?> = ArrayList()
    val participants = meeting!!.participants
    for (entry: Map.Entry<String, Participant> in participants.entries) {
        val participant = entry.value
        if (participant.mode == "SEND_AND_RECV") {
            speakerList.add(participant)
        }
    }
    return speakerList
}

Java

private List<Participant> getSpeakerList() {
    List<Participant> speakerList = new ArrayList();
    Map<String, Participant> participants = meeting.getParticipants();
    for (Map.Entry<String, Participant> entry : participants.entrySet()) {
        Participant participant = entry.getValue();
        if (participant.getMode().equals("SEND_AND_RECV")) {
            speakerList.add(participant);
        }
    }
    return speakerList;
}

API Reference

The API references for all the methods utilized in this guide are provided below.

• pin
• unpin